JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 879 Blog Bookstore
Its funny how one can live the future in the present but not
see any part of that future’s future. Evidently
completely enveloped in the flying frenzy of the 1930’s, planners in
an airport above the River Thames. This
rendition from Popular Science Monthly (January 1934) shows the beast laid out from
just above Westminster Bridge to the (newly opened) Lambeth Bridge, covering the
entire width of the river, with the runways running almost directly into the Victoria
Tower of Westminster Palace.
The
structure had almost everything going for it to be built in the bad category department: it was big, ugly, unnecessary, dangerous, a
hideous eyesore and an architectural atom bomb.
It also would have been almost antiquated by the time it was built,
serving as it did nothing but very small single-prop biplanes, virtually
useless by the time larger multi-engine propeller planes and jet aircraft would
appear just a decade and a half into the future. The thing was built high
enough (the top looking to be at least 300’ high, comparing it to the
to accommodate “the tallest masts of ships”.
No one seemed to take any piece of the future into consideration in planning
this monster—the planning seemed to take place as a retro event, as though the
thinking was being done in 1910 rather than 1934.
This was a piece of engineering so devoid of the
possibilities of future development that just as a crew on one end of the airport
was finishing, it would’ve been just about time for a crew on the first-finished
end to start demolishing it, an exercise in futurizing obsolescence. I’d say
that if you could both build something and take it down in one continuous
movement, the thing should probably not be built